1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems for automating document processing in a distributed computing environment. Specifically, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for implementing work flow systems on an enterprise-wide scale.
2. Description of the Related Art
Paperwork is a fact of business life. To schedule a vacation or purchase office supplies a form must be filled out and processed in accordance with appropriate procedures, including receiving authorizations by various personnel. Similarly, information and data must be disseminated throughout a business organization in the form of sales reports, accounting projections, market surveys, and the like. In some organizations, elaborate written guidelines have been developed to specify what paperwork gets sent to whom and under what conditions.
Often paperwork must be transmitted to or processed by multiple organizational units of a company. For example, hiring a new research scientist may require approval of the research and development department, the accounting department, and the personnel department. In organizations, such as modern multi-national corporations, these organizational units may be located in different buildings, in different cities, or even in different countries.
The “paperless office” was conceived as a way to combat the ever increasing volume of paperwork by replacing paper forms with electronic documents stored in a computer. “Work flow” systems, such as the Workflo® Business System and Visual Workflo® sold by FileNet Corporation, Costa Mesa, Calif., provide the means to create the paperless office by substituting computer based objects for their paper-based counterparts. Such work flow systems provide distributed processing and distribution of data and information in accordance with procedures specified by the business analyst.
FileNet's Workflo® Business System provides a queue-based system for use in a client/server architecture in which objects are sequentially processed to accomplish a business procedure by scripts stored at the client stations. FileNet's Visual Workflo® enables the business procedure to be accomplished using work objects that are processed at client workstations in accordance with centrally stored Instruction Sheets that specify the steps to be performed to accomplish the business procedure.
Previously known work flow systems have been successful in automating document management for organizations located at a single geographic site or area. However, these work flow systems are not presently scalable from a system that serves a single site to a system that serves an organization spanning multiple geographically separate sites. In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a work flow system that may be scaled up from a single site system to a multi-site system.
Previously known work flow systems also may become excessively burdensome to administer and maintain when the number of users becomes relatively large. It would therefore be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for dividing a relatively large work flow system into multiple smaller cooperating partitions. Moreover, to provide seamless operation of the work flow system, it would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for allowing intercommunication of multiple work flows wherein the communications technology is transparent to the work flow system.
In addition, the construction of previously known work flow systems may require detailed a priori analysis, so that the resulting work flow system does not experience bottlenecks that reduce overall throughput of the system. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for dynamically balancing the flow of work through the system.
While previously known work flow systems generally involve only a single site, it would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for connecting multiple work flows over a variety of communications links. Thus, it would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for efficient and transparent inter-site communications while supporting many different connection mechanisms, in which the physical location of a work flow service is transparent to both the user and the work flow definition itself.